Whitewater Wreck

State pulls funding for kayak park; counselors keep their jobs.

A
half-million dollar grant to help develop a whitewater park in the
Spokane River gorge has been cut off for “lack of substantial progress
on the project,” a spokeswoman for the state Recreation and Conservation
Office, or RCO, told The Inlander on Tuesday.

The
state in 2008 had awarded Spokane Parks and Recreation a $536,000 grant
for development of a whitewater kayaking park about a mile downstream
from the Monroe Street falls. In the years since the award, the city has
spent only $60,000 of the grant money, says Susan Zemek, communications manager for the RCO.

“They’ve
had four years. And our board policy is that after four years we’ll
terminate” if a grantee isn’t making any progress, Zemek says.

An
Environmental Impact Study for the whitewater park is on hold until the
grant funding issue is resolved, says Spokane’s recreation supervisor,
Mike Aho.

The city is appealing the termination and will present
arguments to the RCO board on the afternoon of June 23 in Olympia. The
loss of the grant funding is a result of the state’s administrative
review, not the reported presence of native redband trout spawning
habitat within the proposed park’s footprint, Zemek says.

“We’ve heard about the trout through other sources. The city has not mentioned that to us yet,” Zemek says.

This spring, Avista
released a study of redband spawning habitat from the falls to Nine
Mile, identifying 58 habitat sites and 148 redds, the gravel nests where
the trout lay eggs.

The most robust spawning site identified in the
study was at the Sandifur Bridge, which spans the river at the first
bend downstream from the falls. This is also the site for the proposed
whitewater park. (Kevin Taylor)

COUNSELORS SAVED

Early
in May, every Spokane Public Schools counselor without teaching
credentials was laid off. But last Friday, all but 12 of the 55
counselors were notified they’d be hired back on. Counselors were
recalled in order of seniority.

The Spokane Public
School board was operating under the assumption that it would have to
cut up to $12 million from its budget, due to lower state funding.

After finding savings elsewhere, the district decided the cuts wouldn’t come from the counselor positions.

“We’ve gone through the
budget,” Staci Vesneske, assistant superintendent of Human Resources for
Spokane Public Schools. “The board gave us direction to say, ‘No,
they’re not going to eliminate the whole counseling program.’”

The board hasn’t
settled on how it will trim its budget, but initial recommendations for
saving money include suspending the mentor-teacher program, eliminating
instructional coaches, reducing administrative salaries by 3 percent,
eliminating several administrators and freezing non-essential travel.
The possibility of increasing class size by up to three students
remains.

But most of the counselor positions are safe.

“For us, at least,
[counselors] helped a lot of students that would have had issues
otherwise,” Vesneske says. “That’s it in a nutshell.” (Daniel Walters)

SCHOOL’S OUT FOREVER

Students
from Eastern Washington University and Washington State University are
facing dramatic tuition increases, but at least their schools aren’t
planning to close down anytime soon.

Students at Alpine College aren’t so lucky.

Instead
of professors, students at the Spokane Valley vocational school were
greeted on Monday morning with a sign simply stating, “Sorry for the
inconvenience.

Alpine College is permanently closedfor business.” No warning, no explanation, just canceled classes.

Students
with questions about financial aid were urged to contact the
“Washington State Department of Education” — a department that doesn’t
actually exist.

In a
statement released by the college, Alpine says it “has contacted other
vocational schools in the area” and is working to transition students to
those institutions.

All numbers provided for Alpine College have been disconnected. (Kaitlin Gillespie)